Tuesday

t’s Tuesday which means she’s Staci and I’m a lead product manager for a telecommunications firm. I’m always someone mildly important, an integral pillar in some mentionable organization in this month’s fashionable industry. And I’m always someone with structured hours and frequent meetings and sporadic travel agendas. Pitfalls of the job, I always say. I told Staci all this last week over our first dinner, in between her obligatory recounts of her intimate network of friends, and she said “Oh” and swayed her head and admired the responsibility and commitment I have to my imaginary profession and I laughed inside because it was simply getting too easy.

Staci’s got our movie tickets and a vat of buttered popcorn because I told her it’s my birthday. Tuesday birthdays are believable because, who fake celebrates on a Tuesday? Staci’s a real sweetheart, the highlighted brunette with the soft face and eye makeup and soprano that gets me squirming. Staci’s the kind of girl who gives some guys remorse, someone so genuine and straightforward it pains her suitors to think of her as anything less than a mother of his children.

Because her infallible traits as an independent woman have managed to splinter her dating history, I am a paragon. I am who and how she needs me to be. So when I tell her I’m a lead product manager for a telecommunications firm who travels often except for today, Tuesday, which just so happens to be my birthday, well, she is dauntingly grateful to have me around.

When every day is your birthday, luck is manufactured. The benefit of the doubt is gift-wrapped and hand-delivered right to your door. I guess somewhere I’ve never been there is guilt for doing this, for lying about myself, for fabricating my date of birth, for pillaging women for their innocence, for relishing the duty of seduction. Staci has to work tomorrow, be at the office by eight most days, she says, but tells me this so I’ll understand her sacrifice when she has me over later and we’re up until daybreak. What a sweetheart. I nod and tell her I’ll have her home early, you know, speak her conscious for her so she identifies me with her most trusted inner voice of reason, and already she’s rubbing my knee.

Twenty-eight minutes into the movie and the plot is irrelevant. Staci was panting beside me before the previews ended, the executive producer’s name yet to flash in the opening credits before we kicked over the full barrel of popcorn. Act one was coming to a head as I put my belt back together before leading us back up the aisle.

Inside this blind theater is our future as a couple. In the heavy black Staci sees bed and breakfasts and holidays with her family, God bless her. I see a car ride to her place and a sunrise exodus. Our respective paths crossroading here tonight, the junction is temporary at best. Our coinciding time fleeting, Staci whispers me things over the car radio she shouldn’t, things she’ll regret, things she’ll let revisit her, then tongues my ear, and I let her.

 

Wednesday

Wednesdays are a gimme. Wednesday is Trina and I’m a venture capitalist and nothing but an audience. Five Grey Geese into it and she’s become a monologue, expounding on her stalling band-aid gig as a caterer, spiteful over the bitter cliffhanger ending of her nonexistent acting/modeling/singing career. We intersect in mid air, her in her perilous spiral, me in my flourishing ascent. This is how we compliment each other. She gets theatric, everything from her landlord to her mechanic to her sister to her cat a drama, and I’m doing everything but scribbling notes on the cocktail napkin.

Trina’s tongue gets heavy while she slurs her saga about the personal trainer who asked her out to some country rodeo bar. The humanity. This one’s a comedy. Then she spits tonic going through the trauma of her postponed dentist appointment and subsequent cancellation fee. A tragedy. I add colorful quips that spotlight her oppression during her intermittent sips of the next drink. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence as much as she appears relieved she’s talking to someone other than the mirror or her cat.

Catwalking to the ladies’ room, Trina takes the male eyes with her. The bathroom door bumping closed, the male eyes turn to me, perplexed, confused, vengeful. Like they have any idea what kind of sacrifices I’m making. These guys with their shirts that cost more than rent, they think it’s about commitment. About game. About looks. About putting yourself in debt to drive a faster, uncomfortable car while wearing trendier, uncomfortable clothes. They’re hoping I’m her brother and I’m hoping they believe it, because if they knew how Trina gets after a half-dozen martinis they’ll want me hemorrhaging.

I’m the big lottery winner on the news you can’t help but hate.

Trina comes back smelling like pleasure and the walk made her drunker. She’s smiling, a sure sign she’s getting where she wants to be, and asks if she told me about the trainer asking her out to a rodeo bar. Again. I tell her no, what happened, I can’t wait to hear about this. She leans forward, blinking long, setting her assets on the table top, and touches my hand. Dropping cash on the napkin, she says to get a cab, she’ll tell me on the way to her place.

 

Thursday

Thursday is Sasha and I’m a restaurant manager and loving the afternoon rendezvous. Sasha is the wrong way of a one-way street. You take it to see how far you get. She’s left-handed and does her own tattoos, a seductive female devil on her shoulder, some Greek on the bottom of both wrists. I don’t ask because I’m not supposed to. I sip iced tea from her new set of unwashed pint glasses, picking flecks of cardboard out of my mouth. All the paint and toxic art materials are giving me a headache high, and Sasha moves in slow motion in boxers and a white men’s dress shirt, her skin nearly without pigment, eternally isolated from the sun. Her eyebrows naturally scowling, Sasha paints and paints and paints because her parents have never approved of it, never acknowledged her profession, never admitted it was good enough.

People need a reason to get up in the morning, and Sasha’s reasons are hate and contempt. This is so alluring. She walls herself inside this studio box, the fumes altering her understanding of logic and greatly contributing to the onslaught of creative hate she ravages upon her canvases. Sasha has me over because maybe I know something about it, maybe I share her vehement passion, maybe I’m someone who will validate her efforts.

Sweating, sexy and warm from her latest bout of contempt, she shows me what she’s done this week. Lots of very muted colors, standard religious themes layered with cultural icons, then refuted with heavy reds. Could be great, could be crap. There aren’t any price tags, so I don’t know. I choke down more tea and cardboard and wrinkle my eyebrows and tilt my head and rub my cheek and tell her, these are okay, the skill is there, but a premise is lacking. I am quoting a book but neglect to cite the source.

Sometimes this is as far as you get on the wrong way of a one-way street. Sometimes the garbage truck rounds the corner and barrels you over and you’re done. Or sometimes you make it through. It’s really just about timing and never standing still. The reckless garbage truck that is Sasha comes at me, maybe about to destroy me for agreeing with her parents, for solidifying the accuracy of everyone else’s criticism, for crippling her malnutritioned hope. But her lips suction onto mine, the force pulling her into my lap before we thud to the floor and she shows me how to hate in more unconventional ways.

 

Weekend

Friday through Sunday is one big day when I’m everybody. The driving range with the divorced accountant Emily where I’m a longshoreman. We slice and hook and divot through a couple buckets of balls and she appreciates me for venting with her. Then the gym with Sera, the obsessive-compulsive dietician who exfoliates her angst on the heavy bag I struggle to hug for her. Her knuckles and feet red and bleeding from kickboxing, my arms bruised from misplaced jabs, she thanks me in the sauna before I’m off to my make-believe job as a car dealership owner. Then a stint at the improv with Melanie where I’m a banker and she’s checking her phone every eleven seconds for her ex to call. When he doesn’t I’m there to hear her forced laugh and courteous applause and squealing yelps and muffled groans in the back of the cab. All of this leads up to Diana, the juvenile office assistant who wants to go ice skating of all things, even though I say I have to be at work at the hospital in the early morning. An impromptu ankle sprain and my feigned professional care send us to an unscripted early night at a waterfront hotel downtown.

The problems come when you lose objectivity. People don’t voluntarily take undue risks for the sake of entertainment in their regular jobs, not if they want to keep them. As with anything worthwhile, there’s a benefit in doing this, in investing yourself, an eventual payoff that provides residual dividends. Some people are good with numbers or recipes or children or literature or music. I’m good at understanding. I am a hands-on psychologist, a customizable shrink. I diagnose problems, deficiencies, shortcomings, stress, and I create a unique method of treatment specific to each.

The neglected girlfriend whose interest in theater goes unfulfilled, guess where we go. The frazzled mom spending her life bussing kids around, she gets a day at the spa where I supposedly work. Once a case is recognized it’s all about listening. Tactical selection of facial expressions, words, encouraging quips and alleviating laughter are imperative to the success of the treatment. The sessions are short-lived and straightforward, the results varying but positive, the compensation affordable and mutually beneficial.

This has worked for me for some time. All along I’ve been the humanitarian, aiding women in their indigenous plight, these superintelligent vixens who understand all I don’t, yet still need me to diagnose them. The mirror just isn’t objective enough, I suppose. All the hypothetical variables: my job, my name, where I live, my age, all these things you might call lies are what make it work. Most movies are lies, most songs never happened, but does that make them any less entertaining? These things are my added value to society, my ability to create satisfaction in those who are lacking.

This isn’t a service you’ll find in the yellow pages. I don’t have a web site, and I’ve never advertised. This is business rendered without the formality of price tags and contracts and waivers and insurance forms. This is not tax deductible. You will not receive a monthly statement. There is no obligation to buy, no holding period, no waiting rooms, no APR financing. Those in need are identified and addressed accordingly, the candidate ultimately signing on when she pursues the treatment. You won’t see any annual reports, and there are no shareholders, no franchises, no witty billboard slogans. This is as painless as it gets. No needles, no injections, no check-ups, no invasive surgeries, no chemotherapy, no drugs, no artificial stimulants, no rehab.

And this worked so well for so long, until it’s Monday and Cara and I’m a social worker and my tapestry of philanthropic achievement begins to unravel.

 

Monday

It always changes when you make it about yourself. You order your drink before her and you might as well send her home in a cab right then, because she’s not with you anymore. You have to get over yourself, embrace your insignificance and herald your selflessness. You have to be proud of your expendability, bowing down respectfully in order to polish her dignity.

This is all she asks of you, a little chivalry in exchange for her world of splendor, and yet eventually it becomes too much. Eventually even the best of us blur focus and center back onto ourselves, imagining that we have some sort of control, that we are orchestrating the interlude, and we lose sight of the fact that in order to get to heaven you first have to die.

As if living is worth it. As if it’s worth having an identity, independence, pride. As if it’s better to be the supreme ruler of a third world island than a peasant in Rome, where the second you consider defecting or plot a coup you’re executed.

Caesar’s the last thought on my mind here with Cara, the tall attorney with wound crimson curls the shade of blood. She is all necessary elements of danger, teetering on the tantalizing brink of woman holiness before it canyons into self destruction. She lurks on the other side of this tiny square table, a stockpile of nitroglycerin packed in plutonium, my authenticity the stubby fuse connecting me to her. Cara saws through her prime rib and laughs at the irony of meeting me at the post office on my birthday, because it’s Monday and who fake celebrates on a Monday?

You do this long enough and each patient becomes a composite of those who came before her. Cara’s eyes pierce me with the black spear tips of her pupils, her lips glinting like the ocean, wet, her taut skin and poise keeping her together. She’s dissecting a book of meat thicker than my forearm, so I tip toe into questions she already has answers for. Her job is fine. She keeps a condo out on the water. She’s been in the area a couple of years. The generic, manufactured answers come easy, rehearsed, as if she’s heard them countless times before from other inquisitive sheep.

But it’s her bland scent that wrinkles me. So distinct, so unique, not appalling but hardly enticing. It’s her signature, and it’s familiar. While trying to solve it she asks if I date much. Occasionally, I say. She asks if I’ve always been a social worker. Not always, I say. She asks how old I am today, if I don’t mind, and my heart initiates a mild form of panic. I sip water and grin and deflect possible incrimination by asking how her meat is. Her eyes impale me and she asks if I have confidence issues, that I seem to be concealing some kind of void, that my façade is translucent, that it’s okay to acknowledge my weaknesses, that before it can heal the wound must be treated and I say I’ll be right back, I need to use the bathroom.

Mayday.

The floodgates of my pores open and my forehead is damp. We all need timeouts once in awhile, a chance to regroup and face the opposition fresh, because they can never, ever see you sweat. Sweat is weakness is submissiveness is defeat. It isn’t winning and losing so much as it’s aiding and harming. And I’m not here to hurt anyone, though Cara might be. The trip to the bathroom gives me moments to recall her, how she knows my protocol, and before it arrives a petite little dandy smirks at me as she carries her beverage tray back to the bar.

Faucet water washes away the perspiration and confusion, and I kid myself into assuming I have control. Cara is Toni, of course. One of my first cases. She’s improved, the hair obviously dyed from her old black, curled, her glasses replaced by contacts, her name and profession lies to mock mine. A worthy adversary, playing along to flip the script. I’m honored and challenged she’s undertaken me, and here, as I towel my hands dry, is where hubris occurs.

Returning to the cleared table, I’ve forsaken professionalism for swagger. Cara/Toni is going to be fun tonight, my impending honesty likely to diffuse her powder-keg agenda to call me out. I open my stupid little smile and think of saying, “Hey, haven’t I met you before?” when she tells me her sister just called and is going to stop by, do I mind. Nobody waits for my answer as my movie mate Staci appears tableside, her eyes immersed in wrath.

“This is my sister Staci,” Cara/Toni confirms.

It’s very lovely how this is all imploding. Like those high rises toppled by TNT, crumbling into oblivion, everything is atrophying. Staci shakes my hand like its death and it’s all I can do to smile. Our server arrives with two cloaked bottles of champagne and a half dozen or so flutes. Canvassing the scene inquisitively, I feel the howitzer resentment of Cara/Toni and Staci beaming through me. The server starts to uncork the first when a parade of women mills past the hostess and Staci pivots her head and asks if it’s okay if a couple of her friends join us for a bit.

Seeking comfort, I fall back into the depths of my chair as Trina and Sasha and Emily and Sera and Melanie and Diana march up beside us, all of them emanating dissent through clenched smiles. The charade is detailed with proper introductions, handshakes, even a cheers to me on my birthday, only I don’t get a champagne flute. The women work through the two bottles, chatting amongst one another about the restaurant, the food, her dress, her shoes, weekend plans, a new car, various anonymous men, mothers, cats. I sit still inside it all, thirsty.

The server’s back with a tray full of martini and rocks glasses divvied out again to the ladies. This goes on for a bit until I catch the little accomplice’s attention and ask the twerp for the check. He returns a millennium later with another round of drinks and an extra couple bottles of champagne and an arrogance usually reserved for assholes. The little troll rests the check book by my arm and assures me the ladies all had their dinner tabs transferred to my bill.

If only this were the price of it all. Scanning the bill, my modest support group begins to disperse. First Diana then Melanie then Sera then Emily then Sasha then Trina, each of whom neglects to thank me for my services or for dinner. Despite my successful laboring to give them exactly what they sought, my efforts are tainted by my lack of authenticity. Somewhere through all these glasses and bottles and deception is a lesson I’m not seeing, the moral’s integrity distorted by a meniscus of melted ice and pride.

Staci wishes me happy birthday, deliberately knocking a full vodka tonic into my lap as she extends her arm across the table for a handshake that never happens. She sustains composure, but Cara/Toni is unable to muffle her laugh. Hoping it’s over and reaching for salvation I tell Staci it’s good to see her again. She bows out leaving me with Cara/Toni, a four-figure bill and a flammable crotch.

Cara/Toni sees me plainly, finally reducing me to my common denominator, breezy with superiority. Maybe she’s even a little sympathetic, maybe she feels this was overdone, that the punishment exceeded the severity of the crime. Maybe this is the ironic redemption at the end of it all, when we find a future in each other, but no, now she’s struck a match and flicks it under the table and into my lap in such an act of retribution that would make Satan say, “Whoa.”

Cara/Toni and my longstanding profession disappear in the melee of smoke and pyrotechnics occurring at my crotch. Everything at the table alcohol, I contemplate the recovery time of varying degrees of burns before an angel of a woman, the sweet little dandy I caught on the way to the bathroom, steps over with a water pitcher and ends the turmoil. The table hot from the flames, the entire restaurant alarmed and entertained, she offers me a stack of linens and helps to sop up the mess. Humility won’t come near me at this point, so I have nothing to provide her but despair. Her tiny hands dabbing around my pelvis, I say, “Hell of a thing to have happen on your birthday, eh?”

She laughs to be polite and blushes to keep me interested, her drooping bangs failing to conceal the glimpses she’s sending me, her nametag bobbing on her tuxedo shirt, and all I can think about is how tomorrow is Tuesday and Lauren and I’m a fireman.

 

[END]

© 2003 Bryan Meckley - Contributor's Bio